Four months ago, Paige and I came to Larry Mowatt, a Collin County-based realtor I found on Craigslist, to discuss the possibility of selling our current house, as well as to shop in the long term for a new one. Our original game plan was to sell our current house as soon as possible, and get into an apartment while we saved and looked at new homes. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) for Paige, I can’t help myself from looking at prospective areas. In the beginning we were just looking at used houses trying to set the bar for our sporadic requirements list:

• Location not too far from Paige’s work (Coppell/Lewisville area)
• A sizable lot (>= 1/2 acre)
• A good size home with lots of features to grow into with a few kids down the road (and to serve my technology lust).
• New construction under $100/sq. foot
• “Country setting” .. big lots, quiet area, not a lot of traffic
• No HOA if possible

I had originally thought we’d end up along the northern outskirts of the DFW metroplex, which would’ve made it impossible for Paige (or me) to have any kind of possible commute. We started looking at towns like Celina, Prosper, Parker, and other rural areas. We ended up finding a small Dallas-based builder called Sumeer Homes in Celina that had good quality construction at a stellar price-point. Unfortunately, Celina was too far for us, so we put our search on hiatus for a little while. I eventually came back to Sumeer’s new construction map, and saw an image next to Lake Lewisville in a small lake-town called Shady Shores that was only 10 miles from Lewisville. To our luck, the neighborhood fit the bill on pretty much every single point. The lots were 1/2 acre, no HOAs were involved, Sumeer was the builder, and it was within a short driving distance to work / shopping / play.

After a rigorous process of looking through floorplans that Sumeer has built, and figuring out the price point we can afford, we made an offer for a floorplan with some small customizations and a good amount of upgrades. Our offer was accepted late last week, and we are now officially in the process of building our new house. I’m hoping to keep an active photoblog over at flickr of the entire build process.. this will be a very fun process indeed. In the coming 6-7 months, we are attempting to sell our current house as soon as possible, saving, and doing all the leg work for getting the house built.

For now, you can see the beginning of the Shady Shores photo album that has a drawing of the house and floorplan here:
http://flickr.com/photos/arcaner/sets/72157601420015316/